Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

Last night, I spoke to Ma and I said to her, can I speak freely? This came after a particularly difficult episode where she insisted her feet were sticky and they had lost their 'smoothness'. I said, you know that you are getting the best care possible don't you? And she said, yes, I know that. And I said you know that you are safe don't you? She said, yes. Then I said, I know you miss Pa so much and you wish he was here. Yes, she said. But I also understand that he was 82 and if he was still here he would be suffering. Yes. I said. You know that if he were still alive, he would probably be in great pain. And he was also becoming more and more demented. He refused to wear hearing aids, so he was often left out of everything. BUT I said, you know that if he could say anything, he would say that he would want you to be happy. I know, she replied. Well, I said, I can do everything for you, but I cannot make you happy Ma, you have to do that for yourself. And I also know th...

I know myself. I know what I want to do. I know what nourishes me. I know what I need to do. This is all good. It's all good. Right:- Clear the table and the hall Look at all my projects and create a plan for them Proritise Go for run and swim Get dinner ready Yesterday, in the pool Jac said to me, this is the life. I said, it sure is. The spa life, she said. Yep, I replied. And you life it, she said. I sure do, I replied. I do, I do live the fucking spa life. Actually I've lived it all my life. I have lived it as a teenager, I have lived it as an adult. I've lived it as a mum and a conservationist and a teacher. I have - I have totally lived it completely. Not as in luxury, but in a way luxury. I have just done what I believed is right. I have never knowingly taken part in stupid materialistic schemes where the money I've made has come from idiotic, useless things. So in that sense, I have indeed lived the life. And it's partly because I have never been interested ...

Well, only this morning I got up at 6 am, ready to do everything. I had breakfast with Ma, then we went to the Serangoon Polyclinic, to discover that there has been a computer systems crash island wide so we would be waiting for ages to check in to see the dr to renew a prescription. I pushed her to Food Republic through an eerily silent and empty NEX, only to find that the airconditioning wasn't working. Then I pushed her back to the clinic to see that it was still under repair - it still is four hours later - and then we went to the local market to eat.  I was so tired by the time I got back that after the Duolingo, I fell asleep, of course. But was asked by Oisin to accompany him for a late breakfast at 10.30 am. Then I bought som fruit, ox tail and seow bak at NTUC, told off a very rude old man, and then came home. After that I cut up the watermelon and seow bak, fed Ma and then fell asleep. It is now 2 pm. Just like that. The day can't decide what it wants to do.  The haz...

Having now had the experience of being in Singapore during the F1, I can safely say that it is a spectacle on par with the circuses of Rome. You think football games are the bread and circuses, you ain't seen nothing yet. The entirety of the centre of the city is commandeered for a literal chariot race and gladiatorial game. The drivers and the cars and the pits, etc no doubt were no less busy and preoccupied than they were back at the height of the Roman Empire and the crowds were just as asinine and the officials were just as mindless. Let us not forget that the dictators walked around Rome with 12 lictors who carrieed fasces - which is where the word fascist comes from.  They were little better than glorified mob bosses in the end. Just was with the Roman Empire, these spectacles were used to distract the crowds. Free bread was handed out and the crowd were invited to watch these distractions to forget the madness which lay all around them. In Rome it was vast inequality, politi...

The last three weeks has been exhausting. Ma has a dodgy knee. She's had it for a long time, but in the last three weeks it has flared up. This week we went to see the doctor and got her some pain relief. But we also started doing some basic physio. In the last 12 hours the leg has greatly improved. The swelling has gone down and she's feeling less pain. I am feeling relief. Little wins. Anyway. I did more editing yesterday. We went to PS Cafe and it was nice but as always I think the food is only a little better than ok. Definitely not enough to say, oh that's a great place to go. The key lime pie was great though. I ran and swam. The smoke from the forest forest fires still burns. I'd say that by the time they are gone, the forests of Borneo will be wiped out. I finally brought myself to look at the map where the most fires were and it was with horror I saw that they were very near Jambi, around Harapan. So what has happened is that the secondary rainforests have regr...

So, let me get this straight. It has taken us three generations - the Boomers, Gen X and the Millennials - roughly between 1960 to now - to completely fuck up the planet... that's right isn't it? From about when Rachael Carson wrote Silent Spring  to now - when entire rainforests are on fire. Greenpeace was founded in 1972. The Earth Summit was first held in 1982. We have had give or take 60 years to get things right and... did we? Could we have turned back the clock at any stage and done something about it? Yes, yes we could have. If these fucking morons had listened to us, they would have said, actually this is stupid - we have to stop killing ourselves. Even as late as 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was signed, and then in 2020, we had the pandemic and the world shut down. We have had many many opportunities to stop, think and do something about the wrong path that we took, and we just said, these people are pesky little fear mongerers. They don't know what they are talking ab...

It will be a month since I arrived back here. It feels like no time at all has passed. More than that, I cannot seem to get a grip on the rhythm of the days. It's just impossible to sustain anything. I did manage to run and swim properly last week, but this week, it has gone out of the window. I only managed to get swimming and running again today after 5 days - and that is largely due to the insane smoke from the fires which blanket us from Indonesia. It's really really crazy. Luckily, we are on the ground and protected by the garden. I was in town yesterday and it was completely mad. Everything is falling to bits. First, environmental disaster everywhere. Second, genocide in Palestine. Third, economic meltdown and massive inequality. Fourth, the march of AI. I don't know how to make it clearer to people that they are being taken for a ride. How do we do this? I mean I do not take part in that part of the economy, I have long opted out. Everything I have done has been to r...